From Cape you news in Austin,
you're watching Texas this
week with Ashley Good Oh Good
Sunday morning, another special
session has come to an end,
and Texas has a new Secretary of State.
Let's get to the three things you
need to know in Texas politics.
Governor Greg Abbott appointed Fort
Worth attorney John Scott as the new
chief election officer for Texas.
But the governor's pick for Secretary
of State isn't without some backlash.
Scott briefly represented former President
Donald Trump in a lawsuit challenging the
2020 election results in Pennsylvania.
Democrats say Scott is an architect of
the quote Big Lie and questioned his
ability to fairly oversee Texas elections.
The Texas Senate is tasked with
confirming the governor's appointment.
But since Scott was named while
the legislature is adjourned,
that won't happen until they
meet again in 2023.
The University of Texas is raising
some eyebrows after allowing
Governor Greg Abbott to conduct an
interview with the controversial
conservative organization Breit Bart,
on the 50 yard line of DKR Memorial Stadium.
The interview covered Abbott's
executive order banning vaccine
mandates and criticism of President
Joe Biden's policies among the critics,
the Lincoln Project,
the Political Action Committee,
pointed out the Longhorn network
pulled its ad,
which was critical of Governor Abbott from.
Airing during a football game
because it was political in nature,
but allowed the interview to happen.
The US Supreme Court will take up Texas
is near total ban on abortion next month.
On Monday,
the White House asked the High
Court to block the law from being
enforced after EU S 5th Circuit Court
of Appeals froze a district judges
decision to temporarily block the
law pending a hearing on Friday.
The justices said they will hear
arguments in the case on November 1st
but declined to block enforcement
of the law until then.
The Texas Heartbeat Act bans doctors
from performing abortions once
a fetal cardiac.
Activity is detected,
which generally happens at
six weeks gestation,
unless a mother's life is in danger,
the law is not enforced
through criminal penalty,
but rather almost anyone from anywhere
can sue a person who performs an
abortion in Texas or helps a woman
get an abortion in civil court.
The third special session of the 87th
Texas Legislature came to an end just
before 1:00 o'clock Tuesday morning.
Ross Ramsey, co-founder and executive
editor of the Texas Tribune.
Joined me to discuss the session.
Lawmakers were able to pass legislation
on six of the ten items on the
call of mostly conservative items.
Talk to us about some overall thoughts
about this past special session.
Well, I think
you know the main thing that they
had to get done. They got done.
That was draw maps for the House,
the Senate, the congressional delegation,
and the State Board of Education,
and doing redistricting is really
why they had to come back.
It was delayed because of the census
coming in late because of COVID, but.
While they were here,
they got busy on some other stuff
and completed some of the really
most conservative legislation.
Some of that they started earlier in
the year and some that they just kind of
came up here with here at the last minute.
In fact, one of the bills they passed.
They didn't come up with until
Monday morning and by Monday night
it was a constitutional amendment
on its way to voters.
So whenever somebody tells
you the legislature slow,
you've got a counterexample there
slow when they want to be so.
So we're going to dive into some of that.
But let's talk. About redistricting,
the first thing that you mentioned,
we're already seeing lawsuits filed
against the map saying that they
are not representative of Texas.
Is growth. Talked to us about that?
Well, they're not representative of Texas,
is growth, or of its politics really.
It's kind of interesting the
95% of the growth in Texas.
Almost 4 million people moved
to the state or were born here.
The population increased
that much over 10 years.
95% of the growth was people of color.
About half of it was Hispanic.
And Hispanic people in Texas now are
about evenly matched in size or a number,
rather with Anglo people.
So they're about the same number.
And when you go to the maps,
the maps are disproportionately
the districts on the maps.
Whether you're talking about the house,
the Senate and Congressional District,
or the State Board of Education are
disproportionately white majorities.
There are very few districts with
black majorities and some maps.
There are zero districts
with black majorities,
and certainly the number of Hispanic
majority District doesn't match.
The number of Hispanics in the population.
On politics,
if you look at the states then
you use the 2020 election.
Donald Trump got 52% but the
House Senate and congressional
maps are all well above 55%.
Some of them above 60% Republicans.
So they're not only not representative
of the people of the state,
they're they're not representative of
the politics of the people of the state.
I want to talk to you about the conservative
nature of this past special session,
as well as the other specials and the regular
session Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick.
Really sort of showed his muscle if
you will about the things that he
wanted to see on the agenda which were
added to the agenda and passing the
legislature talked to us about that.
Well, I think what you saw in this
legislative session was what you saw coming.
If you were paying close attention
to the 2020 election, Republicans
in Texas had a really good election.
In 2020, they held the house.
They held the Senate in spite of
Democrats attempts to bring in a bunch
of money and turn Texas Blue was the
slogan they didn't pick up seats.
The Republicans held their majorities.
They hold all of the statewide positions
and they came in and they said, you know,
look the voters gave us a mandate
and we're going to take it and they.
Passed extraordinarily conservative
legislation all the way through.
They passed permitless carry of guns.
They passed the nation's strongest
anti abortion bill that you can't have
an abortion after five or six weeks
of pregnancy. Just down the list.
They did a lot of things like that
and I think it reflects their view
of what the 2020 election meant
and what their challengers in the
2022 elections are going to be.
And it's pretty clear from the
way they conducted themselves.
This year in the legislature that
Republicans are not really afraid of
Democrats as a political counterweight,
what they're really afraid
of is other Republicans,
and they're making sure in large
measure as a group that they are the
most conservative people running.
And so when they get into
a Republican primary,
they'll be the ones those
conservative voters will vote for,
and they're not worried about what
will happen in the general election
because Democrats are so weak right now.
I think that that is so clear when
it comes to Governor Greg Abbott,
who some people want to paint.
As a more moderate Republican,
he put some legislation on the call.
He has made statements recently to show
that he is trying to prove if you will,
that he is conservative and that's
partially because he's running
against at least two of the the people
who have announced that they're
challenging him in the primary
are very conservative Republicans.
Yeah, I think
you know one of the account.
One of the overwhelming forces in Republican
Party politics right now is Donald Trump.
And it's partly Donald Trump and the
fact that he's out there talking about
things you know he was talking about.
Texas needs election audits.
And then we got election audits
and some things like that.
But there are also people in the party
who kind of represent the Trump strain.
And when you look at polling to
see where Republican voters are,
Trump's really popular with large
number of Republican voters.
And when you see a Greg Abbott
sort of going in that direction,
he's looking at the same
polls everybody else is.
And seeing that his.
Voters are kind of more in the
Trumpian mode than they might have
been when he was first elected to
a statewide office in the mid 90s,
and he's moved with the voters.
You know, when the special session
this third special session started,
there were just five items on the call.
We ended with teen as you mentioned.
Even on Monday there was another
late add of items to the call.
What does that really say
to you about the governor?
His decision making and the things
that were added to the call?
Well, I think you know part of
this is that they can add to the
call anything that they want to.
So you may say if I'm a governor I
I've got these five items I want first,
but I've got five more items that if you
get done with these I'll come back in.
There's also a little bit
of horse trading here.
If you guys will do this
and this and this thing,
then maybe I'll put this in
this in this thing on the call
on the agenda for the session.
So I think there was a little
bit of both of those things.
They were here for 90 days of special
sessions we had in a year when you're
supposed to have 140 days of legislature,
we had 200.
30 and in the last 90 days
those special sessions,
the governor had full control of the agenda,
and I think,
kind of two year earlier,
point that he wanted a conservative
list of issues that they could
present to voters in 2022.
And that's what they got.
You can read more about the
legislation lawmakers passed in the
Texas Legislature section of kv.com.
That's Texas this week.